1199 Magazine

Our Delegates: Southampton Hospital’s Janine Bassi

August 16, 2017

Real life turned a wary member into a
Union activist.

Janine Bassi did not start out as a
union activist. In fact, she took some
convincing before she could see
the value of collective bargaining.
But once she understood the basic
concepts, she was all in.

“I’ve been at Southampton
Hospital for two and a half years and
this is my first job in a union shop,”
says Bassi, “I was a little bit nervous at
first about what the dues would be and
how the union would affect my career
and my life. But I have to say that it
has been nothing but beneficial.”

Bassi works as a clinical
laboratory technologist at
Southampton Hospital on Long
Island, NY. She’s an active delegate
and leader in her shop and recently
completed a stint as a temporary
organizer, during which she helped
workers at Hudson River Healthcare
win their May union election.

“I now understand that our dues
pay for the entity that helps us to
obtain benefits. How could people
come together to force the employers’
hand on wages and benefits otherwise?

“I’m getting ready to go back to
school to get my Master’s degree and
to know that the cost is covered by the
1199 National Benefit Fund is a huge
weight off my shoulders,” says Bassi.

Before she was hired at Southampton
Hospital, Bassi relied on her
husband’s health insurance plan to
pay for herself and her four children.

“When you add it all up, we
were paying about $600 a month in
premiums for the family, plus copays.

With 1199 there are no co-pays
or premiums, so the savings quickly mount up,” she affirms.
Bassi has a keen understanding
of the value of her benefits; she has a
condition called Sjogren’s syndrome,
which is associated with Lupus and
causes dry eyes and throat. She
requires twice-daily medication
to keep it under control. Without
her 1199 insurance, she would
be paying co-pays for her many
rheumatologists’ visits.

“It is not only people that can afford
it that deserve health care,” says Bassi.

“We’re like a family in the
Union. Our job is to protect each
other like you would your family.
For instance, we have to look out
for our housekeeping colleagues
and not just people like myself
who work in radiology,” she adds.
“Southampton is an expensive place.

Without fair compensation how can
you afford to live here?”

Twenty years ago, Bassi
worked as a home health aide in
Albuquerque, NM, earning $10 an
hour. When she came to New York,
she says, she couldn’t believe that
people didn’t even have the same
wages. Now she truly understands the
value of collective bargaining:

“The Fight for $15 was very
important. There is such a great
need for home care. It is hard, backbreaking
work. But it is what our
elders deserve. Our union colleagues
deserve to be paid fairly for it.”

She also warns against losing
sight of the vulnerability of nonunionized
workers. Says Bassi: “We
need to remember that we should
never choose individual money over
collective power.”